Tourists Are Stupid

So I'm driving 3000 miles across country, on my 40th birthday, to start a new job that promises to be MUCH more positve and uplifting.

It is a very long drive, and it's impossible to determine what could happen to you along the way. Breakdowns, construction, traffic, bad weather, Indian attacks, almost anything is waiting to smash you to a pulp when you hit the open road. So, I tried not to dally and front load my drive time as much as possible. I only gave myself one "slop" day before I had to start work.

Thus, I passed numerous "scenic viewpoints" along the way. These are signs that let you know you're about to drive past something that could change your life. Or you could fall off of to a horrible death. Either way, I missed a lot of them.

So somewhere in western North Dakota (which was AMAZING, btw) I saw a sign that said "Scenic Overlook Ahead". Thus, I decided to stop. To my amazement, I was in The Badlands. As I stood looking over the small, 2.5 foot tall rock wall into the canyons below, I was absolutely awed by the beauty of nature. This was truly God's handiwork (someone else did the Fjords: 5 pts) and it was magnificant.

So taken was I by the sign, that I barely registed reading the "Do Not Approach Wildlife" sign. The sign, I should point out, was very misleading in that it featured the profile of a buffalo. Since it was very doubtful I would ever approach a buffalo, sign or no, I opted to ignore it.

There was a father and an 8 year old boy there having a picnic on the short wall. It was a not plummetting death on the other side, just dirt and scrub that gracefully bent down toward the canyon wall. Thus, the boy was perfectly safe to sit there, right?

Uh huh.

He goes to swing his legs over the outside edge of the wall and suddenly yanks them back up, yelling for his dad.

"Snake!"

His dad, and myself since the boy didn't technically specify WHICH "dad" he wanted, hurried over to see the commotion. The boy said he "heard" a snake below him. We looked over the 2 and a half foot wall, and looking up at us, was a roughly 3 foot long brown rattlesnake.

Snakes, why did it have to be...

I should point out, this was NOT the zoo, nor the pet store. There was no cage, glass or Jack Hanna standing nearby. So here's three idiot tourists, leaning over a 2 and a half foot wall at a THREE foot rattlesnake who is furiously shaking his rattle.

Do the math. Tourists are stupid.

To his credit, the snake got bored with us when I went for my camera phone and slithered off into the brush thinking "too easy".

Had I been bitten, I was going to sue the state of North Dakota, the sign maker, and Jack Hanna (on principle) for making me believe that the only danger was poisonous buffalo, and not the real danger; an eight year old boy with a peanut butter sandwhich.